A Guitar Gently Weeps - There is an Answer?
Posted by Dodo
In the 'free love', drug fuelled search for 'answers' in the 1960/70s some turned to Buddhism, Hinduism and Kabbala for spiritual knowledge. Yet these provided no real insights at all into the predicament of man in a fallen world whose his soul had been wounded.
This song captured this yearning:
I look at you all
See the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor
And I see it needs sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don't know why
nobody told you
How to unfold your love
I don't know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you
I look at the world
And I notice, it's turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake
We must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don't know how
you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don't know how you were inverted
No one alerted you
I look from the
wings
At the play you are staging
While my guitar gently weeps
'Cause I'm sitting here
Doing nothing but aging
Still my guitar gently weeps
George thought he'd found a "solution" by combining Christianity (Hallelujah) with Hinduism (Hare Krishna) in this song:
Perhaps one possible answer to your question, Happy Jack, may be discerned in Wallace Stevens’ poem, ‘The Man with the Blue Guitar’. I won’t paste a copy here; but it can easily be found on the internet. Thanks for taking up the reins after the unfortunate and untimely demise of Cranmer’s blog. Best from New Zealand.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that many of these new-agey 'solutions' are simply attempts to find a transcendental relationship to the divine, which people know intuitively that they should have, but which has been stripped out of many modern expressions of Christianity.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't describe George Harrison as "new-agey". Like Cat Stevens, he was genuinely seeking a spiritual dimension in his life. The question really is: why Christianity failed - and is still failing - to reach to so many. Maybe your right - the spiritual dimension has been stripped out of modern expressions of our faith and what is left is "preaching" and "rules".
ReplyDeleteThat said, I believe the 1960s was one of those historical 'tipping points' where the culture became hostile to the Gospel. This wasn't helped as so many turned to hallucinogens to alter their awareness, thoughts and feelings.
Maybe you're right.
DeleteYou'll find that it's much easier if you start with that assumption 😁
Perhaps 'new-agey' isn't the right description; I'm referring more to the kind of syncretism and appropriating of 'esoteric' Eastern ideas that's been popular since loads of westerners started traipsing across India to 'find themselves' around that time. So much Western Christianity, stripped of the idea of spiritual advancement, is 'I believe, so what?' It's unsurprising that people turn to other religions - which are very much focused on the 'so what?' part and produce voluminous manuals on living - not knowing the richness of their own historic Christian tradition.
The question really is: why Christianity failed - and is still failing - to reach to so many.
The further question here is: what do we mean by 'Christianity'? There are difficulties inherent in speaking about Christianity in general, as there is no one 'Christianity' (as much as everyone is convinced that there should be and that it should be the one that they follow). The JWs are adamant that they're Christians, for example, but they have nothing in common with those going to a charismatic worship service, who in turn have little in common with those going to a Latin Mass or Divine Liturgy.
In the UK, I think it's fair to say that 'Christianity' = 'Church of England' in most people's eyes, and it's not hard to see why that's failing to reach people. I think there's a very strong argument that it never has really reached people, outside of social (or legal) compliance, and what we're seeing now is simply what we would have seen much earlier if people had been given the choice.
I believe the 1960s was one of those historical 'tipping points' where the culture became hostile to the Gospel.
Perhaps, but again: what does one mean by 'the Gospel'? Is it the all encompassing love of God revealed in his son, which allows us to 'become by grace what God is by nature'? Or an intellectual exercise in wriggling through loopholes to appease a massively angry policeman in the sky? Or that life is all predetermined and most of us will burn anyway, so one may as well 'eat, drink and be merry'? I'd happily reject those last two gospels. Are people really being given the true Gospel in the first place?
I'd suggest that the 1960s was a tipping point when people became hostile to the establishment and the churches were (are) comfortably part of that establishment. They'd atrophied into dry bones preaching the law and not the spirit, existing to supply divine warrants to protect the status quo, filled with upper class academics (who may or may not have believed anything themselves), happy to send the lower classes off to wars they'd never fight themselves and preach restraint while indulging their own desires. One cannot pass on what one has not received. The great 'revivals' have been the times when the churches have, at least briefly, returned to their countercultural roots and valued truth over comfort.
Tbh new agey to me at least is a faux spirituality, that excludes God and not just the Christian God. It's about crystals and candles and feeling 'spiritual'' as and if god's are involved they are earth gods which you can project onto them whatever you wish.
ReplyDeleteWhy has Christianity failed recently? Because it's become compromised by those who follow it.
The pervert priests, the pursuit of power, of worldliness, compromised by it's support for the state.
There are many forms of Christian spirituality, and sometimes even Protestant churches have a quiet spirituality at the heart of it's service!! It isn't always ritual, incense etc.
And bickering with each other doesn't help either!
I really wish blogger allowed edit!!
DeleteIt is annoying - but it's free!
DeleteCranmer went down hill once Adrian Hilton had to 'balance the books'. There is a cheap WordPress package but it too doesn't offer edit.
You're right about the modern churches but since the days of the early persecuted Church, has it been any different?
Probably not, but with the press, the media and social media these things become more visible and more discussed.
DeleteThere is no hiding place.
There are many forms of Christian spirituality...
DeleteYes, exactly. There is a type of Christian spirituality for everyone, whether one prefers to roll around in the aisle speaking in tongues, sit quietly in nature or flagellate oneself for one's manifold and varied sins. But this is, ironically, the pick 'n' mix mindset of 'new ageism', where one simply constructs God in one's own image and picks an 'faith expression' accordingly.
What is missing from the modern church is Christ's radical call to holiness and self-denial, which, being too hard (Jn. 6:60), has been reduced to a set of rules to be followed: read the Bible daily, tithe, don't be gay; or whatever. The concept of spiritual advancement has been stripped away under the pretence that any kind of effort or discomfort on the believer's part is a 'doctrine of works'. This is the inevitable conclusion of a doctrine of justification by 'faith': once one accepts the correct clauses, there's nothing else to do except to settle in and await evacuation to the next world. What is the point in going to an average, say, Church of England service? The sacraments are simply symbolic; if salvation relies entirely on the believer, the wider Church plays no part in it; if one wishes to learn, then good preaching is available on YouTube or through one's own study; there are better social groups to belong to if one wants companionship; and the churches have largely surrendered their social mission to the state. Christianity has made itself irrelevant.
Why has Christianity failed recently? Because it's become compromised by those who follow it.
It's become compromised because it no longer knows God. There are too many idols set up in his place. The rot had set in long before the scandals erupted; arguably the scandals occurred on the scale they did precisely because the edifice was rotten.
Yes I use blogger for that reason. Free is good 👍 also I don't attract a lot of comments, which makes it less important.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of which give it a plug:
ReplyDeletehttps://parkinsonsisnotajourney.blogspot.com/
Great to listen to While My Guitar.... again after all these years. Shame that by 1968 the moptops had started thinking that injecting lines of nonsense into otherwise great songs was a good idea.
ReplyDelete